Gone with a whimper: 4m musical based on classic novel closes after ten weeks

Saturday 31 May 2008 21:09 BST

The West End production of Gone With The Wind is to close after 79 performances.

The show – billed as a play with music – cost £4.75million to create and had SirTrevor Nunn as its director.

But poor box office sales and a mauling by the critics meant its days were numbered and the final curtain will come down on June 14.

Frankly they don't like us: Darius Danesh and Jiill Paice will perform their leading roles for the last time later this month

Frankly they don't like us: Darius Danesh and Jiill Paice will perform their leading roles for the last time later this month

Bookings were being taken for the next four months up to September and ticket-holders have been told to contact ticket-sellers for a full refund.

The production – billed as a ‘play with music’ – was roundly condemned by critics when it opened in April.

One major criticism was its length, which was initially four hours and was cut several times during the run until audiences were asked to sit through three hours and 15 minutes, including an interval.

The producers had high hopes of taking the musical to Broadway, although that now seems unlikely.

Producer Aldo Scrofani said: ‘Despite the critical response, the company has enjoyed much praise from audience members and for that we are grateful. Nevertheless we have made the difficult decision to close the West End run.

‘Plans for a New York production are on hold and in the meantime we are pursuing various options from interested parties worldwide.’

Sir Trevor Nunn, who was director of the Royal Shakespeare Company for 18 years, spent more than three years working on the show.

He agreed to take it on after novice writer and composer Margaret Martin, a doctor of public health from California, sent him a CD of her songs and a script.

Her adaptation of the 1,000-page Margaret Mitchell novel drew heavily from the classic 1939 film starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, which told the story of Scarlett O’Hara’s survival of the Confederacy defeat in the American Civil War.

But theatre critics were unimpressed. The Mail on Sunday’s Georgina Brown said: ‘It wholly fails to blow one away. It’s less Gone With The Wind than Marooned On A Millpond. Not bad, just tedious.’

London Evening Standard critic ‘nasty’ Nicholas de Jongh wrote: ‘Connoisseurs of big, bad musicals must rush to catch Gone With The Wind in case it’s quickly blown away on gales of ridicule.’

Other reviews said it felt ‘like a hectic, strip-cartoon account of a dated pop classic’ and looked ‘spendthrift and threadbare’.

But producers defended the show, pointing out that some audiences had given it a standing ovation.

Mr Scrofani believed that anyone who did walk out might have had a train to catch. ‘I don’t think they wanted to leave,’ he said.

The closure means financial disaster for the show’s backers, as most musicals require about a year to break even.

Gone With The Wind’s failure is one of the biggest flops in the West End in recent years. The £12.5million production of Lord Of The Rings is set to close in July after a 14-month run, although producers said they were on course to make a profit from runs on Broadway and in Germany.

Ex-Radio One DJ Mike Read’s Oscar Wilde musical, Wilde, closed in 2004 after just one performance. And Behind The Iron Mask announced its closure just two days after its opening night.